The Wonder Of Faith Series

HEBREWS 11:23-27 [Leaving a Legacy Series]

THE WONDER OF FAITH

[Acts 7:20-44]

To the Hebrews Moses was the supreme figure in history. He was the leader who had rescued them from slavery and who had received the law of the covenant with God. To the writer of the letter to the Hebrews the foremost fact about Moses was that he was a man of faith.

This man of faith’s whole life was marked by an awareness of the presence and power of the unseen God and faithful obedience to His Word. Moses made a clear-cut life altering decision to follow the way of the eternal God instead of partaking of the passing pleasures this world system offers (CIT).

Life is made up of decisions. Some are simple and unimportant, and some are complex and extremely important. Many are made almost unconsciously, whereas others we think about carefully for a long time. Some decisions are made by default. When we put off deciding, a decision is made for us. But it is still our decision, because we decide to put it off. The course and the quality of our lives are determined much more by our decisions than by our circumstances.

No person in Scripture other than Jesus illustrates the power of right decisions better than Moses. His decisions were right because his faith was right. I hope you too today are challenged to make faith-based decisions.

In this example of Moses our writer uses five illustrations of obedience because of faith in the future fulfilment of the promises.

I. RAISED BY PARENT’S OF FAITH, 23.

II. REJECTS THE WORLD’S PRESTIGE, 24.

III. REJECTS THE WORLD’S PLEASURES, 25.

IV. REJECTS THE WORLD’S PLENTY, 26.

V. REJECTS THE WORLD’S PRESSURES, 27.

With this transition to the life of Moses in verse 23, the writer began to focus on the way faith confronts opposition and hostility, a subject familiar to his readers. “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”

Moses began life as a child of faith. The faith shown at Moses’ birth and upbringing was his parents’. Their faith was that God had a special plan for Moses’ life.

To stem the population explosion among the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, the Pharaoh gave an “edict” that all male babies were to be drown in the Nile. To protect their newborn son, Amram and Jochebed first hid him for three months, and then put him in a waterproofed basket and placed him in the Nile near the place where Pharaoh’s daughter bathed. He was found by the princess and taken to be raised as her own child. Moses’ sister, Miriam, who was watching, persuaded the princess to get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the infant. Miriam, of course, got her mother, who was then able to raise her own son almost as if he had been at home.

The reason the parents hid Moses from the king's edict is said to be because he was “beautiful” or godly. This means more than that he was a beautiful or lovely baby - have you ever seen one that wasn’t? There was something about the child which spoke to the parents that he had a special touch from God. In Acts 7:20 Stephen says Moses was beautiful to God or he was beautiful with respect to God. That means in the sight or estimation of God, Moses was beautiful. The parents’ special affections came from God’s special affection, which is so often the case with parents and children.

This love caused them not to be “afraid of the King’s edict.” The children of God are obligated by God to obey the laws of the country in which they reside, and disobedience to these laws is sin against God. They are obligated to obey these laws only up to the point where obedience to these laws would mean disobedience to God. The parents of Moses were entirely within their rights in this case, for the reigning Pharaoh was violating the law of God which forbids murder. (Acts 4:15-22).

So Moses’ parents willingly risked their own life and placed their child in a basket on the banks of the Nile where he according to God’s intervention was discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter. It took considerable faith to put Moses in the basket and then to trust that Pharaoh’s daughter would have pity on a Hebrew baby. Yet when he was, Moses’ mother Jochebed acted in faith and offered to train the child and in faith taught him the ways of God and the promises of God. His mother helped build in Moses the faith that was going to become the basis of his life. She gave him to the courts of Egypt but built into him the faith by which he would direct his life.